The Government has prohibited, through an order published in the BOE, the movement of cows and bulls between Castilla y León and the rest of Spain and, therefore, the European Union. Only the provinces of Valladolid, Leon and Burgos, officially free of tuberculosis infection according to the EU.
The measure comes, like a kind of 155 cattle, after the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development of Castilla y León, chaired by Vox, approved on May 15 a resolution that makes bovine tuberculosis controls more flexible.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the regional resolution establishes a unilateral reduction of controls and requirements to prevent the spread of disease.
Specifically, the resolution of the Board exempts farms from mandatory movement tests to prevent the disease from spreading, allows the transfer of cattle from farms suspended to others free of the disease and relax the requirements of the farms affected by this infectious animal disease to obtain the sanitary qualification of free of bovine tuberculosis.
A European petition
The ministry had already presented, on May 23, a Sponsored links in the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León against the autonomous resolution. This new order, with “urgent and immediate measures”, comes after the European Commission itself, after learning of the regional resolution, has urged the Government of Spain to take more forceful measures.
Castilla y León has the largest cattle census in Spain and in Salamanca, in addition, there is one of the most important National Bovine Markets in the country. Already last year, before Vox entered the Government of the Junta, the far-right party defended a Non-Ley Proposal related to reducing the measures for the fight against bovine tuberculosis since, according to its spokesperson, “the administration and bureaucracy strangles ranchers and farmers and conditions in an unbearable way, up to levels of having to close their farms”.
Last summer, when a case of bovine tuberculosis was detected in Lario (León), the Junta de Castilla y León decided to slaughter only that cow and not the entire herd of 141 cows, as was done up to now. The vice president of the Junta de Castilla y León himself, Juan Garcia-Gallardoalso from Vox, made it clear that this measure, which was highly controversial, especially in veterinary circles, was “only the beginning”, but it has not been until now that its health policy has turned black on white.
García-Gallardo has defended the resolution approved in Castilla y León on May 15, assuring that both “the national program and the European regulation” of sanitation against bovine tuberculosis are “a total failure” that “the only thing they do is drown the ranchers”but has not ruled after the intervention of the Government.
To be continue.
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